


along the dotted line

by MathildaHilda



Series: until the end of infinity [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 11:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16094360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MathildaHilda/pseuds/MathildaHilda
Summary: He calls out and that’s when he falls.***Bucky remembers, the Soldier doesn't.





	along the dotted line

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Mars" by Sleeping at Last

He’s the oldest of four, and you’d think that’d teach him something. Anything at all, really.

It doesn’t, and he keeps picking fights with the kids in the yard when teachers aren’t and are looking, and he doesn’t stop picking fights until he watches a tiny, punk kid get his ass handed to him by Tommy the Asshole on the second day of second grade.

He kicks Tommy’s ass for the first time and gets a black eye for his attempt at justice. He fights him a second time and it earns him a two broken fingers and a concussion, but all he does is laugh and point at Tommy’s split lip and cut eyebrow.

You’d think that growing up with three sisters and tiny Steve Rogers would’ve taught him anything.

It doesn’t. Not really.

 

 

 

He signs a form with a heavy sigh and a pounding heart, goosebumps forming on his arms from the cold of the room.

He signs a form with his name, just as his father had done years before, and he keeps sighing and toast his own pity until he reaches Steve’s door and finds the kid doubled over in wracking coughs in the cold December air.

The rejection form lays on the table and Steve pulls the covers closer.

 

 

 

They hear them before they see them, the looming tanks and the soldiers in masks with crazy lights.

He feel them before he sees them, the sharp tools that cut into the soles of his feet and the pads of his fingers and the shocks that make him stutter for a few hours and then they start over.

He dreams of Steve and of fighting in the ring back home and he dreams of escape and fire and biting winter.

He dreams that they make it out until he realizes that they are marching home, some barefoot and everyone unwashed, and his clothes barely fit him anymore. He tries to remember how they got out, but all he remembers is the man with the red skull for a face and Zola’s glasses that shone in the terrible light and made him think of sharp things and pain.

 

 

 

He’s a sniper, that much he knows.

He’s a sniper who’s too good at his job and he doesn’t realize until much later that that might be why Zola chose him. But he doesn’t realize that until he visits a museum and sees his own face and the man on the bridge and that there was a war that he once fought where he wasn’t anyone’s tool.

He was sent to protect, not to kill unless it became necessary.

 

 

 

He can’t feel the cold of winter or the howling of the wind. He can only see Steve growing smaller and his mind imagines a time when the only thing he had to worry about was Steve getting enough food and not growing cold in their small apartment.

He calls out when he falls, fingers inches from Steve’s, and he feels that maybe this is what living feels like.

He screams, because it takes him by surprise. He screams, because the fear of dying is stronger than the fear of the unknown.

There’s a thud and a crack and the air leaves his lungs and he prays, for once, that it’s quick.

 

 

 

It’s not quick, but he doesn’t remember that.

He dies, in a way, and leaves behind a body that’s no longer his.

They strap him to a table, realigns his spine and forces his leg back into place and he screams until his throat is raw.

It takes them years to figure out how to shove him away, and he doesn’t make it too hard for them once the Soldier’s real and James Buchanan Barnes is a shadow.

He screams and bangs on the walls of cages he can’t unlock, and his shell sleeps, wakes and kills like a puppet on strings.

 

 

 

He used to scream and protest at the same government that now wants him dead and now all he can do is run from it.

He finds Steve and a man with jibes and metal wings and he doesn’t feel quite so alone.

 

 

 

The woman with the red hair chokes under his hand and he doesn’t recognize her until later as the little girl with so much light in her eyes that it hurt to look. That light died and left behind a girl who was a little like him.

She called him _ghost_ and _dog_ until she wasn’t there to call him anything at all.

 

 

 

He averts his eyes when Stark watches the reel and he clenches his hand against the gun to keep it from remembering what cracking his skull felt like. He shuts his eyes to keep from remembering what breaking her windpipe felt like.

Stark lashes, and all he can think about is how right he is.

 

 

He runs because Steve tells him to. Because taking orders is far too easy in a place that’s destroyed him and keeps squeezing his heart and taught him how orders are meant to be taken to minimize the pain.

 

 

 

He almost passes out from the pain that shoots through his body. The arm lays smoking and twitching not too far away, and all he can do is stare until his body finally tells him it’s time to shut down.

Stark roars and the light from his armor is blinding and Steve leaves behind the one thing that drove him forward before he realized that maybe he wasn’t so righteous anymore.

Captain America allowed him to be a soldier.

But if there was one thing history forgot, it was that Steve Rogers had always been a soldier.

He blinks at bleary lights in a hidden country and thinks that maybe he finally did learn something, after all.

 

 

 

Steve helps him catch up on history and his heart stops every time he mentions someone he thinks he used to know.

The Commandos are gone. Carter has yet to wither away in the ground.

Ma didn’t make it past sixty, and here he is; pushing fucking hundred.

Ida lost a husband in another war. She died after what happened in New York.

Betty died in ’85 and left behind a kid with his name.

Becca’s still alive, and all he want to do is cry.

 

 

 

_Bucky._

_Asset._

_Prisoner #56898._

_Winter._

_Ghost._

_White Wolf._

The names never stop and the years never stop taking.

The army had taught him to walk it off. Help the next man. Win the fight. Walk it off.

So, that’s what he tells himself later, in a jungle, a gun in his hand just like old times and an arm strapped to himself that for once doesn’t ache.

No one ever called him James, or even Jim. It was always titles and nicknames and brands.

_The Fist of HYDRA._

_Soldier._

_Sarge._

Even _Manchurian Candidate_ , whatever that is.

 

 

 

It tingles, at first. But then he takes a step, and it turns into itches and then he move some more and it doesn’t stop.

He walks into the clearing and sees Steve, once again, grow smaller in his eyes until he sees the kid on the schoolyard in second grade.

He calls out and that’s when he falls.

**Author's Note:**

> In the MCU it's canon that Bucky has three siblings, one of them being Rebecca Barnes Proctor. Since I couldn't find anything about the other two, I decided to make some up! 
> 
> Elizabeth "Betty" Barnes, 1923-1985  
> Ida Mary Barnes, 1925-2013
> 
> Comments are what eases the writing block. Tell me what you think!


End file.
